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Returning player with questions...
ussat
Member Posts: 19 Arc User
in The Academy
So......been watching the TOS again and got bit by the STO bug and thought I would give the game a shot again. It has been MANY years since I have played, thinking of getting a month-to-month sub to try things out. (I know could try FTP but, meh...I believe in supporting the devs)
I have been watching Brent Jutice's youtube vids (STO Fed play through circa 2015), I know things have changed since then. Few questions if I may before I hit warp drive and jump in.
1) How casual/noob friendly is the game, I have a very odd work schedule, and a lot of the time I will be solo playing, on that note, I know its a MMO, but how solo friendly is it ?
2) Guilds/fleets/what ya call em here.....are they are all mostly hard core raiding or any casual player ones.....I REALLY like the social aspect of the game when I can. ( I know that sounds contradictory with #1, but my schedule is so odd some times I will be soloing, but when others are on, well ya I like the social aspect)
3) Economy....watching those vids, EC/Dilithium/Lobi/Latinum/Zen its all pretty confusing.
4) Story...I REALLY like storylines that are well put together and flow well.....how well would you rate them ?
5) Is there a MAC version ? (my main system at home is a PC, but my work/travel laptop is a mac.)
Thats it for now, thanks for putting up with the questions.
I have been watching Brent Jutice's youtube vids (STO Fed play through circa 2015), I know things have changed since then. Few questions if I may before I hit warp drive and jump in.
1) How casual/noob friendly is the game, I have a very odd work schedule, and a lot of the time I will be solo playing, on that note, I know its a MMO, but how solo friendly is it ?
2) Guilds/fleets/what ya call em here.....are they are all mostly hard core raiding or any casual player ones.....I REALLY like the social aspect of the game when I can. ( I know that sounds contradictory with #1, but my schedule is so odd some times I will be soloing, but when others are on, well ya I like the social aspect)
3) Economy....watching those vids, EC/Dilithium/Lobi/Latinum/Zen its all pretty confusing.
4) Story...I REALLY like storylines that are well put together and flow well.....how well would you rate them ?
5) Is there a MAC version ? (my main system at home is a PC, but my work/travel laptop is a mac.)
Thats it for now, thanks for putting up with the questions.
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2. Fleets (what they are called here). I am sure there are hard core "raiding" Fleets in STO, however there is no real raiding in STO to begin with. Most Fleets I have been involved with are very casual friendly, the trick is finding one that has people online at the same time(s) that you normally play. The Armada system and the associated Armada chat means that you have @ 16 Fleets worth of people "available", greatly improving the chances that you'll find others online at any given time. Joining a good Fleet, with a good Armada means that you will almost always be able to find someone willing to help out on a tough mission, or provide advice/assistance with questions. (See item 1 above). Blatant plug here. The Fleet in my siggy is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best, especially for a casual/new player. Almost always someone online no matter what day/time it is and never a problem finding someone willing to help you out when needed. If interested, go to the URL in my siggy, look things over, and go from there.
3. The economy is confusing, and for any given economy question you might have, ask 10 people, you'll get at least 7 different and often contradictory answers. Going back to item 2, a good Fleet with their own Forums will assist in getting STO economy advice while avoiding the trolls you'll get here in other places.
4. Some of the story lines are extremely well done, others...... I personally think the Romulans got the best deal in that respect, then KDF, then AoY/Fed (one of the only things where KDF/ROM actually got some loving instead of table scraps from the FED feast). That's all just my opinion though. All Factions converge into the exact same story lines early on and at that point faction doesn't make much difference, and, again, some story lines are great, other, blah.
5. They dropped MAC support quite some time ago. I do believe some players have found work arounds to manage to keep playing on a MAC, maybe a few of them will see this and chime in.
If the price of a monthly sub doesn't bother you, the benefits are worth it. I personally would at least try the game for a bit before spending any money as, in my opinion, by the time the benefits of subscribing really factor in you would have already played long enough to decide whether you were gonna keep playing or not. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for people giving their money to Cryptic for this game, I'm a lifer and I want this game around for a long, long time, and I believe anyone that loves both Star Trek and gaming will love this game, but I'm also against seeing people spending money on something they might not like if they can get it free.
The game is super casual friendly. You can get anything you want in game with the exception of a tiny number of veteran subscriber rewards just with some patience and some time grinding out resources.
There are usually 3 free top tier ships every year that can be earned from events. The Anniversary event, Summer event and Winter event. Each one requires a small daily task to be completed to give you an account unlock of a top end ship for free.
As to how solo friendly, well the VAST majority of the game in just a single player game tbh. There are fleets yes, and most end game content is teamed; but the whole leveling process is solo story missions. And if you ignore the teamed queues and run to battlezones at endgame you can continue to play solo if you fancy it that way.
2) Guilds/fleets/what ya call em here.....are they are all mostly hard core raiding or any casual player ones.....I REALLY like the social aspect of the game when I can. ( I know that sounds contradictory with #1, but my schedule is so odd some times I will be soloing, but when others are on, well ya I like the social aspect)
Fleets generally are having a hard time retaining players i think, or rather the game overall is. But there are fleets out there who are into serious roleplay, or into PVP, or just uber-casual and pretty much use STO as a chatroom. There is such a variety and you'll surely find one you get on with. Most in my experience as casual friendly and you'll get fleet store access with a little resource input to show your worth to them.
3) Economy....watching those vids, EC/Dilithium/Lobi/Latinum/Zen its all pretty confusing.
Zen is the "real world" currency. You buy it with cash, or you can convert to it with dilithium using a player exchange system.
Dilithium is given out for literally everything and also is required for literally everything. It runs upgrades, makes zen on the exchange, is used to buy fleet gear and keep fleet projects going. You can only refine 8k ore per day but will soon be drowning in the stuff. EC is from selling vendor trash or anything you can list on the player marketplace/exchange. Just about everything that can be thought of can be sold on the exchange and ending up with billions of EC is not too difficult if you play your cards right. Lobi only comes from lockboxes and is super valuable. It can buy the best goodies but is also expensive to acquire a lot of it. Latinum is just a fun currency and has no use right now.
4) Story...I REALLY like storylines that are well put together and flow well.....how well would you rate them ?
Story is pretty good tbh. And it goes one for over 100 missions now i'd say, even more if you include all the other factions too. And there are some amazing foundry missions made by players too, lots to keep you busy.
5) Is there a MAC version ? (my main system at home is a PC, but my work/travel laptop is a mac.)
There is no MAC version. There was, but they pulled support for it last year.
Thats it for now, thanks for putting up with the questions.
For some reason I cant see/click on a link in your sig to see the fleet.
www.ufplanets.com
https://ufplanets.com/
Edited to add direct link
I guess I am most interested in the story and then later on see what comes.....I am open to reccomendations of what and why you recommend that.
Thanks
2. Fleets (that's what guilds are called in this game) can be hardcore or extremely casual. It basically depends on how the fleet leaders decide to run the fleet.
3. Yes, there are many currencies in the game. However, the primary ones you need to know about are:
Zen - The only currency that can be used to make purchases in the C-Store. Can be used to purchased refined dilithium.
EC - The only currency you can use to buy items from the Exchange.
Refined Dilithium (or simply Dilithium) - The only in game currency that can be converted to Zen. It has many other uses ranging from upgrading gear, contributing to fleet projects, and running reputation projects at end game to gear reputation gear.
4. Story missions are generally pretty good, but after the Delta Quadrant story arc the number of story mission in each arc generally ranges between 6 to 9. It seems many players do not like the Delta Quadrant story arc... buggy missions on Kobali Prime does not help the situation.
5. Support for the Mac version has officially been dropped and there are no plans to release a Mac compatible version of the game. According to one of the developers, Mac players represented less than 1% of the playbase; that was before the PS4 / XBone version of STO was released. STO requires a minimum of DirectX 10 to play the game. Macs do not support DirectX and Windows emulator for the Mac only officially supports DirectX 9. WINE (a Windows emulator) is currently being developed to support DirectX 11, but it is still a work in progress.
Note, there was never an official version for the Mac. The Mac version had a "wrapper" program used to translate Windows instructions to Mac instructions which was developed by a 3rd party developer.
Well, I can always bootcamp my mac and install windows on that partition and play it there, the mac version was a thought
Thanks
1: There advancement system is sprawling with a lot of branches, but most of the branches are time gated, and many have a kind of daily bonus (either a day long project or a once-a-day boost to a mark reward), so many branches of advancement aren't just casual-friendly, but hardcore-unfriendly.
For example, reputations give a daily mark bonus, and you can advance by one 2500 exp daily project and two 200 exp hourly projects per day, per reputation. The daily bonus will more than cover one of each project, giving you most of the possible daily advancement for the minimum input. A hardcore player will benefit more from being able to cycle through all their reputations every day than advancing them faster.
2: I'm also a member of UFP as several other posters, and will speak well of the fleet. There isn't much hardcore PVE to the game, nothing of what most games would call "raiding" and what PVP there is is around what people have come to expect of a free to play game. Fleets are mostly social things, with some shared advancement unlocks from building starbases and colonies and the like.
4) Some of STO's storyline is disjointed. It shifts gears a lot, and it sometimes suffers from the "small universe" effect when the devs prefer to pull in something established in the shows rather than create something new, or tie disparate things together. I enjoy it overall, and the newer content has gotten all around better.
Tacs are more DPS oriented yes, Eng are a kind of combo tank/healer IMO, and Sci is your standard wizard. Space magic is quite fun if you like that style, beyond that there's really not a lot of difference. With a very few exceptions, STO really has no niche (or need) for the standard healer, tank and DD. It's just a matter of whether you prefer melting the enemy with space magic, killing them before they can kill you, or shrugging off their attacks as you whittle them away. Your ship an BOFF skill choices play a much larger factor than your class does.
To me, Romulans have a much better story line, followed by KDF, then AoY (23C Fed) and finally Fed. Once the story lines converge, everything is definitely Fed centric, other than an occasional token change in dialogue if you are KDF or Rom everything plays out basically as if you are a Federation player. If you really like TOS, an AoY (Fed only) toon gives you a too brief start in the TOS setting, but even after moving to the "present" you get to keep the Uniforms, sounds, effects etc.
The nice thing is, even with F2P, you have enough toon slots to try all Factions, although it will require deleting toons and starting new ones to try all Factions x all classes x all ship types.
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/pab_sto/news/detail/9065123-star-trek-online-5-year-anniversary-infographic
Other than end game PvE queue missions or PvP missions (PvP is pretty inactive in STO compared to other MMOs); there is not much interactions amongst the factions.
As for your captain's career, yes, there are "3 classes". However, your career does not limit what type of ship you can command. An engineer character can still command a science vessel if you decide to do so. Generally speaking, it is a good idea to try all the careers. Based on the 2015 infograph, tactical is the most popular career of the three. As for which faction is best for which career....
Federation - Suitable for all career especially science since traditionally KDF and Romulan lacked faction specific science vessels until last year. Feds have the widest selection of of available ship with plenty of science vessels to choose from in the C-Store.
KDF - Basically suitable for both tactical and engineering, and more recently science. They have access to ships that lean towards science (Lt. Commander science station, but no Commander science station), but not many actual science vessels in the C-Store. However, that changed in 2016 so the KDF currently has access to a few T6 science vessels.
Romulan - Best for tactical, then engineering and lastly science. Romulan Warbirds use singularity cores rather than traditional warp cores. That means Warbirds gets 4 singularity abilities, but the trade off is the singularity core only gives you 160 points to allocate to the 4 subsystems (Weapons, Shields, Engines, Auxiliary) vs. 200 points for warp cores. Not much of a big deal when you start off playing the game, but it does become more noticeable as you approach level 50 and beyond when enemies get tougher (especially after level 55). Allocating adequate power to all subsystems can be a challenge.
Romulans are best for tactical because your character has the Romulan Operative trait which gives +1.5% Critical Chance (to hit), and +3.8% Critical Severity (damage). Romulan bridge officers (Boffs) can have the Superior Romulan Operative trait (SRO) which give +2% Critical Chance and +5% Critical Severity. Most T5 and T6 ships have 5 Boff stations, but I believe there are two Cross Faction (available to all factions) T6 ships that have 6 Boff stations. If you have 6 Romulan Boffs with SRO, then your ship gets +12% Critical Chance and +30% Critical Severity... and add in your Romulan character's bonus as well.
Romulans are not the ideal choice for the science career unless you do not mind commanding a ship that is not Romulan faction specific ship since the singularity core gives less power compared to a warp core. Science abilities is affected by how much power is allocated to Auxiliary, the more power allocated the stronger the effects of certain science abilities; whether it is healing or damage. Focusing most of the power to Auxiliary means less power to Weapons, which decreases the amount of damage energy weapons can do. But focusing most power to Weapons means science abilities are less effective.
Similar to the KDF, there are not many science vessels for Romulans. In fact, there are no free science vessels to choose from as your level up until you reach level 40. Romulan T6 science vessels only became available in the C-Store in 2016.
Does your fleet/armada have a Romulan fleet ?
I think they had a "RoM" Fleet for a while, or maybe it was just discussed. Since the game only supports Fed Fleets or KDF Fleets, a ROM Fleet is really just a FED or KDF Fleet with only Romulan toons as members anyway. We have 4 Fed Fleets, with the main Fleet maxed, I believe the 2nd is also maxed, or at least close to it. There are also 3 (or 4) KDF Fleets, again with the main Fleet maxed. Main toons go into the main Fleet, alts into the others base on how much you actually play them. That keeps room available for new players in the maxed main Fleets. Alts needing access to the main Fleet to buy equipment not available yet in the others is relatively easy.
You can join UFP at any time, and we cover many other games, not just STO, just can't join a Fleet in STO till meeting the criteria above. If you haven't read closely on our web site, one really nice feature is that we have awesome volunteer members who fill the role of "Recruit Support Officer", new members are assigned an RSO who is your own personal point of contact for any question or help. They volunteer for the position because they enjoy it so they are extremely helpful and prompt at getting back to you.
Yup, been spending time on your site, I am impressed with it.
And thanks again for all the tips/pointers.
I am Mac User too, and the only way i have found to run STO on Mac is with Windows Emulator : VirtualBox for example is free and is decent to run Windows 7/8/10 on a Mac... STO didn't require a lot of ressources for running correctly, i am sure any Mac (after 2010) can run it with good framerate...
You are quite welcome. I made the mistake of just accepting random Fleet invites when I first started playing, some actually worked out great but I think I just got lucky in that aspect. I found UFP when I actually read through the recruitment threads when it became clear it was time to leave a bad Fleet one of my toons was in. After a month or so, I moved every toon I had that was in a bad not good Fleet to UFP, and every new toon since then. That was bit over a year ago and as you can see, a year later I like it just as much if not more than when I joined
I don't want any new players to go through the hell hassle of dealing with joining not so good Fleets like I did. A good Fleet makes this game just that much better, so getting new players into a good Fleet (whether UFP or not) means they are liable to stick around.
Well, I would recommend (if you can get them) Terran Phasers for the added Control aspect; once you start the Iconian Rep you'll have access to Radiant Quantum Torps, they have a chance for bonus shields which can help; and last suggestion is to keep in mind that being a Science Captain doesn't limit you to science vessels (one of my best characters is an Orion Sci Captain who started with the Orion FDCs and is currently in a 29c. Temporal Dreadnought until I can get the "Allied FD Assault Cruiser" pack and he specialises in overwhelming numbers with fighters, Photonic Fleet, Fleet Support, etc.)...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
- The TOS Character is only useful during the TOS Event, and during that event it is a must have mainly because of the Temporal transponder (google it)
- Alien race is the more flexible, have a look here : https://sto.gamepedia.com/Personal_traits/Race-specific_Personal_traits
That page compare all the race and the different personnel space and ground traits, if you play Star Trek to play in space you would want a race which have space trait, and when It come to Klingon faction race, I prefer the Alien because you can make him look as you want (Klingon if you want) and if have best space trait Efficient Captain..
It is useful also for Romulan because of Space trait Efficient Captain which improve subsystem energy when low, and Romulan even if they have best ships have a lack of power with their singularity core (less energy than with a warp core)
It depends. Aliens get an extra trait slot because they don't have their own innate trait like the official races. Romulans for example get a species trait that gives you some crit bonuses. Humans get a species trait that slightly boosts a ship's passive hull repair. Etc.
So it depends on whether you're happy with a species trait or would prefer an extra option. Aliens are certainly beneficial if you start acquiring traits via lockboxes, missions etc.
For example, if you want to deal damage and play as the Romulan "faction" then the Romulan species trait would be beneficial.
Appearance wise your can make your alien look exactly like any of the official races.
Daizen - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Selia - Lvl 60 Tactical - Eclipse
Thanks
- +2% critical chance + bonus damage when you leave cloak with the two Romulan space trait
- Efficient Captain +30 power to all subsystem when low,
May be I would go for the Romulan, I have 2 Romulan science captains (one is Alien, the other Romulan), I can tell you how much energy I have with the two of them with Efficient captain, and without any space equipment on my Romulan multi mission warbird...
So which do you prefer, your alien or the Romulan and why ?